Charlottesville Breaking News

Miss Representation and Miss Informed promenade the Downtown Mall seeking 500 signatures for a petition to correct the portrayal of Lewis and Clark guide Sacagawea in the statue at Ridge and West Main. "We object to the sexist and inaccurate representation," says Miss Informed (Kelly Silliman). "She'd never cower." Miss Representation (Jen Hoyt-Tidwell) has spoken before City Council, and the pair want due respect for and a proper accounting of the woman who, despite toting a newborn baby, assisted the L&C expedition to the Pacific.

Perhaps no man since a certain "Sage"
has one man been more closely associated with Monticello than
longtime head
Dan Jordan, but Jordan plans to say farewell next year. He has
set November 1, 2008, as his departure date to give the Thomas
Jefferson Foundation's board of trustees plenty of time to seat a
successor. Already renowned as a scholar before his 1985
appointment, Jordan proved himself a master power-broker as well.
He built support for the concept of viewshed protection, garnered
several million in federal funds for a new park and
popular trail, and, in a $15 million stroke in early 2004,
acquired Montalto, the only turf overlooking what Jefferson
called his "Little Mountain." Jordan, 69, has also marked his
tenure with sweeping changes including embracing and emphasizing
the contributions of slaves and by acknowledging the 1998
revelation that one of them,
Sally Hemings, probably bore several children b...

At 1 o'clock this morning, the Albemarle County Board of
Supervisors approved developer Hunter Craig's
Biscuit Run development, the largest development in County
history, which will include a minimum of 3,100 new houses on the
828-acre property along
Route 20 South, plus a 400-acre County park, reports
Charlottesville Tomorrow.

While many at the public hearing– which did not begin until 11
last night– called for a more extensive environmental impact study
before the development was approved, and others expressed concern
about increased traffic on Route 20, the BOS voted unanimously to
allow rezoning of the property, a decision that was surely helped
along by Craig's whopping $41.15 million proffers offer.

According to supervisor David Slutzky, Biscuit Run may be the
lesser of two evils. A proponent of shutting down growth in the
rural areas of the County, Slutzky sees the development as a way to
steer the thousands of people moving here into designated growth
areas. He also points out that Craig could have b...

Attention dog owners: if you're one of
those people who've been flouting the city's leash law along the
Greenbelt in Riverside Park, you might want to consider that your
canine's free-roamin' ways could cost you some freedom. Or at least
some money. This past weekend, the city kicked off a new wave of
leash law enforcement, as a community patrol officer issued five
citations for leash law violations– a class four misdemeanor
punishable by a fine up to $250. In late December 2001,
the city enacted a leash law in all parks, designating certain
spaces and times when dogs can be off leash. While Riverside's
rules allow dogs to run free on on the "short loop" (starting and
ending at the park parking lot) on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and
Thursdays, many dog owners are letting their dogs
exceed these bounds. "We're going to enforce it," says
Charlottesville Police Sergeant L.A. Durrette, "and city and county
residents need to understand that the city does have a leash law."
Durrette says the decision to ramp up enforcement in all city parks
was a result of community complaints,

A group of heretofore mysterious artists
have finally been revealed as the painters of the masterful
faux brick design that has covered the east side of Beta Bridge
for the past month. Impressive in its own right, the project is
also remarkable for its apparent role in the preservation of the
orange and maroon "Hoos for Hokies" message painted on the bridge
on the day of the
Virginia Tech massacre. 'Hoos for Hokies' has remained
unpainted-over longer than any other message since Beta
Bridge became a daily-altered canvas in the 1970s. Nine UVA
undergraduate students and their professor, Sara Brown, painted the
brick trompe l'oeil as a final project in their Scenic Painting
class this past spring semester. "We've done this kind of thing as
a final class

project before," says Brown, but since this year's project
became inevitably linked to the preservation of 'Hoos for Hokies,'
it has enjoyed a different and more public success than previous
ones have. Brown began assigning her students a final project to be
painted on B...